German engineers tend to be somewhat savvy when it comes to cars but they made one fatal mistake in the past that lost the 5 star rating from their American customers; the vehicles were perfect in every sense but they were missing cup holders. In order to remain competitive they had to grit their teeth and design into their product a feature which is of little use when you’re shifting gears at 120MPH down the autobahn, but without which there would be little use for drive-thru espresso bars at your interstate mall. When you hear about globalization applied to software development it means product globalization and is simply the act of getting a product to be accepted the world over. Today you can buy a BMW in most countries of the world making it a truly globalized product but rarely the same identical product in any two countries. Each country has their legal, practical and aesthetic requirements that shape the end product. In order to build a product that can be globalized it needs to be designed in such a way as to allow small deviances from a large common base. The act of designing an adaptable common base is often called internationalization while filling the gaps with all the requirements of a particular country is referred to as localization. An internationalized product is fully operable and works in at least a single base locale. The product has been localized when it has been adapted to work in something other than the base locale. When a product has been localized for many countries it can be though of as becoming a globalized product. Continuing the car analogy, designing the car so that the steering column can potentially be configured on either side would be an act of internationalization. Physically building a model with the steering column on the left would be an act of localization. Translation is often mistakenly interpreted to mean localization but is in fact merely a small part of the entire localization effort. If all you did to sell a Japanese toaster oven in UK was to translate the instructions you’d be in trouble the second it graced 240v. The secret to success in building a global product lies in managing the balance between where to stop generalizing and where to start customizing. More generalization is a better thing for you as it makes the product much easier to maintain. On the other hand, more customization is better for the customer as they get a product that is highly relevant to their culture.